Northwest Coast Indianmember of any of the aboriginal North Native American peoples inhabiting a narrow belt of Pacific coastland and offshore islands from the southern border of Alaska to northwestern California.

The Northwest Coast was the most sharply delimited culture area of native North America. It covered a long narrow arc of Pacific coast and offshore islands from Yakutat Bay in the northeastern Gulf of Alaska south to Cape Mendocino in present-day California. Its eastern limits were the crest of the Coast Ranges from the north down to Puget Sound, the Cascades south to the Columbia River, and the coastal hills of what is now Oregon and northwestern California. Although the sea and various mountain ranges provide the region with distinct boundaries to the east, north, and west, the transition from the Northwest Coast to the California culture area is gradual, and some scholars classify the southernmost tribes discussed in this article as California Indians.

The Kuroshio, a Pacific Ocean current, warms the region; temperatures are rarely hot and seldom drop below freezing. The offshore current also deluges the region with rain; although it falls rather unevenly across the region, annual precipitation averages more than 160 inches (406 cm) in many areas and rarely drops below 30 inches (76 cm) in even the driest climatic zones. The northern Coast Range averages an elevation of about 3,300 feet (1,000 metres) above sea level, with some peaks and ridges rising to more than 6,600 feet (2,000 metres). In most of the Northwest, the land rises steeply from the sea and is cut by a myriad of narrow channels and fjords. The shores of Puget Sound, southwestern Washington, and the Oregon coast hills are lower and less rugged.

The peoples of the Northwest Coast spoke a number of North American Indian languages. From north to south the following linguistic divisions occurred: Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, northern Kwakiutl, Bella Coola, southern Kwakiutl, Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka), Coast Salish, Quileute-Chimakum, Kwalhioqua, and Chinook. Along the Oregon coast and in northwestern California, a series of smaller divisions occurred: Tillamook, Alsea, Siuslaw, Umpqua, Coos, Tututni-Tolowa, Yurok, Wiyot, Karok, and Hupa.

Northwest Coast groups can be classified into four units or “provinces.” The northern province included speakers of Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and the Tsimshian-influenced Haisla (northernmost Heiltsuq or Kwakiutl). The Wakashan province included all other Kwakiutl, the Bella Coola, and the Nuu-chah-nulth. The Coast Salish–Chinook province extended south to the central coast of Oregon and included the Makah, Chinook, Tillamook, Siuslaw, and others. The northwestern California province included the Athabaskan-speaking Tututni-Tolowa as well as the Karok, Yurok, Wiyot, and Hupa.

The Northwest Coast was densely populated when Europeans first made landfall in the 18th century. Estimates of density in terms of persons per square mile mean little in a region where long stretches of coast consist of uninhabitable cliffs rising from the sea. However, early historic sources indicate that many winter villages had hundreds of inhabitants.

Stratification and social structure

The Northwest Coast was the outstanding exception to the anthropological truism that hunting and gathering cultures—or, in this case, fishing and gathering cultures—are characterized by simple technologies, sparse possessions, and small egalitarian bands. In this region food was plentiful; less work was required to meet the subsistence needs of the population than in farming societies of comparable size, and, as with agricultural societies, the food surpluses of the Northwest encouraged the development of social stratification. The region’s traditional cultures typically had a ruling elite that controlled use rights to corporately held or communal property, with a “house society” form of social organization. The best analogues for such cultures are generally agreed to be the medieval societies of Europe, China, and Japan, with their so-called noble houses.

In house societies the key social and productive unit was a flexible group of a few dozen to 100 or more people who considered themselves to be related (sometimes only distantly), who were coresident in houses or estates for at least part of the year, and who held common title to important resources; in the Northwest those resources included sites for fishing, berry picking, hunting, and habitation. House groups also held a variety of less-tangible privileges, including the exclusive use of particular names, songs, dances, and, especially in the north, totemic representations or crests.

Within a house group, each member had a social rank that was valued according to the individual’s degree of relatedness to a founding ancestor. Although social stratification in Northwest Coast communities is frequently described as including three divisions—chiefly elites, commoners, and slaves or war captives—each person in fact had a particular hereditary status that placed him within the group as though he occupied one step on a long staircase of statuses, with the eldest of the senior line on the highest step and the most remotely related at the bottom. Strictly speaking, each person was in a class by himself.

The highest in rank invariably held a special title that in each language was translated into English as “chief”; this person administered the group’s properties. Usually a man or the widow of a past chief, this leader determined many of the patterns of daily life—when to move to the salmon-fishing station, when to build weirs and traps, when to make the first catch, when and where to perform the rite propitiating the first salmon of the season, which other groups should be invited to feasts, and so on. A chief had many prerogatives and sumptuary privileges and in turn was expected to administer efficiently and to tend to the social and ritual affairs that ensured the general welfare and prestige of the group.

Notionally those of high rank had vast authoritarian powers. However, within the group all mature persons other than slaves could voice their opinions on group affairs, for a house group’s property was held in common. Most leaders refrained from abusing other members of the house and community—not only were they kin, but the chief also needed their cooperation to accomplish even the most basic tasks. For example, many strong arms and sturdy backs were needed to obtain, assemble, and position the heavy materials required to build or repair a house, to construct fish weirs and traps, and to launch and paddle the chief’s huge dugout canoe. Many singers, dancers, and attendants were necessary to stage important ceremonies properly, and many bold warriors were needed to defend the group against foes. Leaders were also aware that there was enough flexibility in the social structure that those of low rank could abandon an abusive situation and move in with kindred elsewhere.

Slaves, however, had few or no rights of participation in house group decisions. They usually had been captured in childhood and taken or traded so far from their original homes that they had little hope of finding their way back. They were chattels who might be treated well or ill, traded off, slain, married, or freed at their owner’s whim; a typical house group owned at least one slave but rarely more than a dozen. Their duties generally included boring, repetitious, and messy work such as stocking the house with firewood and water. In some groups, slaves could achieve better social standing by displaying an unusual talent, such as luck in gambling, which made them eligible for marriage to a person of higher status.

In many cases, insignia or other devices were used to signal personal status. Chiefly people often wore robes of sea otter fur, as otter pelts were quite valuable in the fur trade; the quality and level of decoration on clothing marked other statuses as well. Head flattening was considered a beautifying process from the northern Kwakiutl region to the central Oregon coast, as well as among some of the neighbouring Plateau Indians. This painless, gradual procedure involved binding a newborn child’s head to a cradle board in such a way as to produce a long subconical form, a strong slope from the eyebrows back, or a distinctive wedge shape in which the back of the skull was flattened. In the Northwest Coast culture area, head flattening was practiced only on relatively high-status infants, although the capture and enslavement of children from neighbouring tribes that also undertook this modification meant that a shapely head was no guarantee of an individual’s current status. See alsoBody modification body modifications and mutilationmutilations.

The status of each member of a house group was hereditary but was not automatically assumed at birth. Such things had to be formally and publicly announced at a potlatch, an event sponsored by each group north of the Columbia River. The term comes from the trade jargon used throughout the region and means “to give.” A potlatch always involved the invitation of another house (or houses), whose members were received with great formality as guests and witnesses of the event. Potlatches were used to mark a wide variety of transitions, including marriages, the building of a house, chiefly funerals, and the bestowal of adult names, noble titles, crests, and ceremonial rights.

Having witnessed the proceedings, the guests were given gifts and served prodigious amounts of food with the expectation that what was left uneaten would be taken home. The social statuses of the guests were recognized and reified through the potlatch, for gifts were distributed in rank order and the more splendid gifts were given to the guests of highest status. Whether hosting or acting as guests at a potlatch, all members of a house usually participated in the proceedings, a process that served to strengthen their identification with the group.

Although potlatches shared some fundamental characteristics across cultures, there were also regional variations. In the northern province, for example, a major potlatch was part of the cycle of mortuary observances after the death of a chief, at which his heir formally assumed chiefly status; in the Wakashan and Salish regions, a chief gave a potlatch before his own demise in order to bestow office on his successor.

Some early anthropologists argued that the potlatch was an economic enterprise in which the giver expected to recover a profit on the goods he had distributed when, in turn, his guests became potlatch hosts. However, this was an impossibility because only a few guests of highest rank would ever stage such affairs and invite their former hosts; those of intermediate and low rank could not afford to do so, yet the value of the gifts bestowed on them was considerable. Indeed, before the fur trade made great quantities of manufactured goods available, potlatches were few, whereas feasts, though also formal but not occasions for bestowing titles and gifts, were very frequent.

Subsistence, settlement patterns, and housing

The traditional Northwest Coast economy was a complex whole. One of its most important distinctions was the highly efficient use of natural resources. Aquatic resources were especially bountiful and included herring, oil-rich candlefish (eulachon), smelt, cod, halibut, mollusks, five species of salmon, and gray whales. However, the fisheries were scattered across the region and not equally easy to exploit. Certain species of salmon, for example, traveled upriver from the sea to spawn each year, but only in certain rivers and only at particular times of the year.

Generally the important species for preservation for winter stores were the pink and the chum salmon. Because these species ceased to feed for some time before entering fresh water, their flesh had less fat and when smoked and dried would keep for a long period of time. Other salmon species, such as sockeye, coho, and the flavoursome chinook or king salmon, were eaten immediately or dried and kept for a short period, but their high fat content caused the meat to spoil relatively quickly even when dried. Therefore, the principal fishing sites were those along rivers and streams in which pink or chum salmon ran in the fall. In the spring other sorts of fish became available in tremendous schools: herring came in to spawn in coves; candlefish entered certain rivers; and, farther south, smelt spawned on sandy beaches in summer. People also went to sea to hunt marine mammals and to fish for offshore species such as halibut.

Water transport was highly important in the region for subsistence purposes and as a way to effect trade between tribes and later with fur traders. All groups made efficient dugout canoes. Northern groups, as well as the Kwakiutl and Salish down to Puget Sound, made dugouts with vertical cutwaters, or projecting bow and stern pieces, as well as those with rounded sterns and hulls. The Nuu-chah-nulth and some of their neighbours made vessels with curving cutwaters at the bow, vertical sterns, and angular flat bottoms. Northwestern California dugouts had upturned rounded ends, rounded hulls, carved seats, and foot braces for the steersman. Watercraft were made in different proportions for different purposes; for instance, large reinforced vessels were used to move people and cargo, while shorter, narrower craft were used for sea - mammal hunting.

Summer was a time for hard work; food had to be caught or gathered and processed for winter consumption. Usually homesites and settlements were limited to narrow beaches or terraces because the land fell so steeply to the shore or riverbank. Between the limited number of building sites and the uneven distribution of natural resources, it was most efficient for a house group to have several bases of operation. In summer they dispersed into small groups that moved among fishing and berry-picking sites and other established but minor residential areas as their resources became available.

Most people spent the winter in villages with several sizable houses (each with its associated group) as well as at least one very large structure in which the highest-ranking group lived and where the village could hold a large potlatch. During winter people of higher status rarely worked at day-to-day activities (leaving that to slaves), instead using the time to create two- and three-dimensional art and conduct potlatches, dances, and sacred ceremonies that brought people together to socialize, trade, and negotiate relationships within and between communities. For instance, from Tlingit country in the north to at least as far south as Puget Sound and perhaps farther, several house groups would typically pass the winter together at a site in a sheltered cove that was protected from winter winds. During this period the relative prestige of each group and individual was factored into all interactions. These assemblages of multiple house groups at winter village sites are often called “tribes,” but it must be noted that such units were not politically integrated, for each of the component houses retained its economic and political autonomy.

As structures, Northwest Coast houses shared a few significant traits. All were rectilinear in floor plan, with plank walls and a plank roof, and all but those of northwestern California were large. In the north, most houses were built on a nearly square plan, reaching sizes as large as 50 feet wide by 55 feet long (15.25 by 16.75 metres). They were typically constructed around a deep central pit, with vertical plank walls and a gabled roof intermeshed for stability. To the south, in the Wakashan province, houses were typically rectangular and reached sizes of approximately 40 feet by 60 to 100 feet (12 metres by 18.25 to 30.5 metres); huge cedar posts with side beams and ridgepoles constituted a permanent framework to which were attached wall planks and roof planks that could be taken down, loaded onto canoes, and transported from one site to another.

Some peoples in the Coast Salish–Chinook province also built houses of permanent frameworks with detachable siding and roofing, although they generally used a shed roof system with one slope instead of a peaked roof. Along the lower Columbia River, the typical house was built over a large rectangular pit that was fairly deep and lined with planks, as the earth provided excellent insulation against the cold and damp; only the gabled roof and its end supports showed above ground. At the southernmost limit of the culture area, the northwestern California house type was designed for single-family use. These homes were constructed over a central pit, with low side walls of redwood planks and a three-pitch roof somewhat reminiscent of a pyramid. The peoples of northwestern California also built a combined clubhouse and sweat house that was the focus of male activity; these multipurpose structures were common to many California Indian groups.

Technology and the visual arts

The indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast drew from the heavily wooded environment for much of their technology. Woodworking was facilitated by the abundance of easily worked species of trees, especially the giant arborvitae (Thuja plicata, also known as red cedar) and the redwood (Sequoia sempervirens). The trunks of these trees could be split into planks or hollowed out into canoes, containers, and other useful objects.

The peoples of this region were noted for their artistic skill, and many everyday items were decorated in some way. More than most other groups in North America, Northwest Coast visual arts emphasized symmetry, neatness of finish, and embellishment through carving and painting. Traditional carving implements included adzes, mauls, wedges, chisels, drills, and curved knives, all made of stone; sharkskin was used for sanding or polishing wooden items.

As far south as the Columbia River, wooden boxes were made of red - cedar boards that were kerfed—cut nearly through transversely. The wood was steamed at these points until it was flexible enough to shape into the form of a box. Dishes often were hollowed out of pieces of wood, sometimes plain, sometimes in the form of animals or monsters. Other items made of wood included spoons and ladles, canoe bailers, trinket boxes, chamber pots, masks and rattles used in ceremonies, magnificent memorial or totem poles and interior house posts, housefronts and screens, halibut hooks, and even the triggers of animal traps. Sometimes items were made from the horns of mountain goats, bighorn sheep, or elk, which were carved by essentially the same methods as wood. Occasionally sculptures were carved from stone.

Artists in the northern province emphasized low-relief carving accented by painting; their motifs were the hereditary crests of the clans or parts of the crests. Different groups in the northern province expressed themselves in somewhat different styles. Haida art, for instance, tended to be massive and to comprise highly conventionalized balanced elements. In Tsimshian carving and painting, there was an effort to leave no open space in or between the conventionalized motifs; filler elements such as eye designs and miniature figures were used intensively. Tlingit art was slightly less conventionalized, with relatively little use of filler elements.

In the Wakashan province, representative art was frankly sculptural, impressionistic, and bold. There was a limited amount of simple geometric design on such things as whalebone clubs and whaling harpoon barbs. Their Coast Salish neighbours used some, but less, representative art, similar if looser in style. On Puget Sound there was little representative art; the abstract painted designs on the canoe boards were unlike anything else in the region. Most traditional Chinook art is represented by just a few angular figures incised on mountain sheephorn bowls. In the southernmost part of the culture area, in northwestern California, art generally focused on geometric patterns incised on elkhorn objects and shells. (See also arts, Native American.)

Weaving was also highly developed. The inner bark of red cedar was stripped, and the long ribbonlike strands were woven into mats and baskets, using a checkerwork technique. The same material could be shredded into finely divided flexible hanks, which were twined together to make a slip-on rain cape shaped like a truncated cone. The softer inner bark of yellow cedar was made into robes. Persons of high status wore robes made of or edged with strips of sea otter fur and yarn made of the wool of mountain goats. Salish groups near the Georgia Strait wove robes of mountain goat wool and also of wool from a special breed of shaggy dog. The Chilkat, a Tlingit group, wove robes and basketry, applying various twilling techniques to fabric and basketry alike. Their blankets bore representations of crests in blue, yellow, black, and white.

Twined basketry made from long flexible splints split from spruce roots illustrated great technical skill. Baskets so tightly woven as to be waterproof were made for cooking in northern and northwestern California; their contents were boiled by placing hot stones into the soup or potage within the basket. Storage containers, receptacles for valuables large and small, and rain hats were also woven. The Coast Salish specialty was coiled baskets.

Dress patterns of the area were fairly simple, and, although ceremonial garments and some hats could be highly embellished, most clothing was worn for protection from the environment rather than for ostentatious display. Both women and men customarily wore some combination of necklaces, earrings, nose rings, bracelets, and anklets; these were made of various materials, mostly shells, copper, wood, and fur. Some individuals rubbed grease and ochre onto their skin to produce a red colour, often accented with black; tattooing was also practiced. Throughout the region women wore skirts or gowns of buckskin, soft leather, or woven wool or plant fibres. Men’s dress varied from tribe to tribe but was in general quite minimal—most men wore nothing but ornaments on warm days. Men of the northernmost Tlingit and the Kitksan of the upper Skeena wore tailored buckskin breechcloths, leggings, and shirts in cold weather; elsewhere they wore robes of yellow cedar bark or pelts in cold weather and rain capes in downpours.

Kinship and family life

While groups in the northern province tended to be matrilineal—passing status, property, and education through the maternal line—those in the other three provinces were generally patrilineal. Marriages were usually arranged by parents, who openly wished to see their children rise (or at least not fall) in status. As with up-marrying slaves, members of the middle classes of a group could marry up if they had distinguished themselves in some way; the children of these marriages would inherit the status of the higher-ranking spouse. If the spouse of lower rank was not distinguished in some way, the children would accrue the lower status; as this was generally seen as an undesirable outcome, such matches occurred relatively rarely.

An interesting aspect of Northwest Coast culture was the emphasis on teaching children etiquette, moral standards, and other traditions of social import. Every society has processes by which children are taught the behaviour proper to their future roles, but often such teaching is not an overt or deliberate process. On the Northwest Coast, however, particularly northward of the Columbia River, children were instructed formally. This instruction began at an age when children were still in their cradles or toddling, and all elder relatives, particularly grandparents, participated in it. Lessons were often delivered gently and humorously through the telling and retelling of folktales; trickster tales recounting Raven’s exploits were especially entertaining, as his troubles were so obviously the result of his dissolute, lazy, gluttonous, and lecherous personality (see Raven cycle). Children born to high status were given formal instruction throughout childhood and adolescence. They had to learn not only routine etiquette but also the lengthy traditions by which the rank and privileges of their particular group were validated, including rituals, songs, and formulaic prayers.

Changes in status were generally marked by public ceremonies. Formal rituals were considered necessary at each of two or three critical stages in a person’s lifetime—birth, a girl’s attainment of puberty (there were no boys’ puberty rites in the area), and death—because at those times the participants in these events might be especially vulnerable or so filled with power that they could inadvertently harm others. A newborn infant was believed to be in danger of harm by supernatural beings; the infant’s parents were simultaneously in danger and potentially dangerous. Mystic forms of vulnerability and volatility also accrued to girls at puberty, to the close kin of a deceased person, and to those who prepared and disposed of the dead. Such perils were avoided by isolating the persons involved—either within a boarded-off cubicle in the house or in a simple structure out in the woods—and by limiting their diet to old dried fish and water. At the conclusion of the isolation period, a formal purification ritual was performed. The intensity of the restrictions varied considerably, not only in different parts of the coast but even within individual houses. Often the pubescent daughter of a chief, for example, was secluded for many months, whereas her low-ranking house sister might have to observe only a few days of confinement.

Over most of the coast there was a very great fear of the dead. A body was usually removed from the house through some makeshift aperture other than the door and disposed of as rapidly as possible. An exception occurred in the northern province, where bodies of chiefs were placed in state for several days while clan dirges were sung. Disposal of the dead varied. In the northern province, cremation was practiced. In the Wakashan and part of the Coast Salish areas, large wooden coffins were suspended from the branches of tall trees or placed in rock shelters. Other Coast Salish deposited their dead in canoes set up on stakes. In southwestern Oregon and northwest California, interment in the ground was preferred.

Religion and the performing arts

The religions of the Northwest Coast shared several concepts that provided the widespread bases for various kinds of religious activity.

One concept was that salmon were supernatural beings who voluntarily assumed piscine form each year in order to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of humankind. On being caught, these spirit-beings returned to their home beneath the sea, where they were reincarnated if their bones or offal were returned to the water. If offended, however, they would refuse to return to the river. Hence, there were numerous specific prohibitions on acts believed to offend them and a number of observances designed to propitiate them, chief of which was the first-salmon ceremony. This rite varied in detail but invariably involved honouring the first salmon of the main fishing season by sprinkling them with eagle down, red ochre, or some other sacred substance, welcoming them in a formal speech, cooking them, and distributing their flesh, or morsels of it, communion-fashion, to all the members of the local group and any guests. The maximal elaboration of this rite occurred in northwestern California in what have been called world-renewal ceremonies; these combined first-salmon rituals, first-fruits observances, and dances in which lineage wealth was displayed. Elsewhere the first-salmon rituals were less elaborate but still important, except among the Tlingit, who did not perform them.

Another religious concept was the acquisition of personal power by seeking individual contact with a spirit-being, usually through prayer and a vision. Among Coast Salish all success in life—whether in hunting, woodworking, accumulating wealth, military ventures, or magic—was bestowed by spirit-beings encountered in the vision quest. From these entities each person acquired songs, special regalia, and dances. Collectively, the dances constituted the major ceremonials of the Northwest Coast peoples; known as the spirit dances, they were performed during the winter months.

In the Wakashan and northern provinces, it was believed that remote ancestors who had undertaken vision quests had been rewarded with totemic symbols or crests. Displaying these hereditary crests and recounting the traditions of their acquisition formed an important part of potlatches. In the Wakashan area certain ceremonial cycles called for the dramatization of the whole tale of the supernatural encounter, which in some cases included the spirit-being’s possession of and its eventual exorcism from the seeker; such dramas were performed by dancing societies.

Shamanism differed from other acquisitions of supernatural power only in the nature of the power obtained—that is, power to heal the sick through extraction of disease objects or recovery of a strayed soul (see soul loss). It was commonly believed that some shamans, or medicine men and women, had the power to cause infirmities as well as to cure them. Witchcraft was used to kill others or to make them ill and was believed to be carried out by malicious persons who knew secret rituals for that purpose (seewitchcraft: Witchcraft : in Africa and the world).

Modern developmentsCultural continuity and change

The impact of European and Euro-American colonialism on the peoples of the Northwest Coast varied at different periods and in different regions. The Tlingit were the first group to encounter such outsiders, when Russian traders made landfall in Tlingit territory in 1741; these colonizers did not establish a garrison in the region until 1799 and then only after heated resistance. Spain sent parties to the Haida in 1774, Britain to the Nuu-chah-nulth in 1778, and the United States to various groups about 1800.

The colonial expeditions sought sea otter pelts, which were particularly dense and highly prized in the lucrative Chinese market. Although the Russians pressed Aleut men into corvée labour as sea otter hunters, they traded with Northwest Coast peoples for furs and food. In exchange they brought foreign manufactured goods to the tribes. These materials affected indigenous cultures only slightly, as the tribes selected the articles that complemented existing culture patterns. They acquired steel blades, for example, that could be fitted to traditional adzes to cut more efficiently than stone or shell blades, yet initially spurned axe and hatchet blades because these required a drastic change in motor habits and coordination patterns.

By the middle of the 19th century, a number of trading posts had been established in the region. The peoples of the region recognized that fur traders were more interested in commerce than in self-sufficiency; having long been involved in commerce among themselves, indigenous groups found novel ways to profit from this. Tlingit house groups provisioned the trading posts with fish, game, and potatoes; the latter were a South American crop that had by this time circled the globe, having arrived in the Northwest Coast via Russian trade. They sold literally tons of food; records indicate that in 1847, for instance, the Russians purchased more than 83,000 pounds (37,650 kg) of game and fish plus more than 35,000 pounds (nearly 16,000 kg) of potatoes from the Tlingit. Other avenues of entrepreneurship were open as well. The Tsimshian and others gained control of major portage routes and shipping lanes, demanding fees for passage and vessel rental; some of their monopolies were in place for decades. Still other groups hired out their slaves as prostitutes or labourers.

Although the Northwest Coast tribes had quickly found ways to benefit from maritime trade, they found it more difficult to cope with the flood of settlers from the eastern United States and Canada that began in the 1840s. These emigrant farmers were encouraged by their governments to move to what are now western Washington, Oregon, Vancouver Island, and the lower Fraser River Valley valley (see also Homestead Movement). In the United States this occupation was accompanied by the removal of the tribes to small reservations in present-day Washington and Oregon, under the provisions of formal treaties. In the area that is now British Columbia, there were no treaties extinguishing native title to the land; undeveloped land was presumed to belong to the Crowncrown, and transfers of developed land were private affairs.

Effective missionary activity began in various parts of the coast in conjunction with the settlement movement. Missionaries on the Northwest Coast were very successful at directing culture change, teaching not only Christian precepts but also the precepts of etiquette, sobriety, household hygiene, and punctuality and a host of other requirements for participation competency in the dominant culture. In addition, the formal schooling of indigenous children was in the hands of missionaries on much of the coast for many decades.

From the late 18th through the entire 19th century, the most disruptive events for Northwest Coast peoples were epidemics of contagious diseases such as smallpox, venereal infections, and measles. These had a profound effect on native society because—never having been exposed to these illnesses before—the people suffered extremely high death rates; it is estimated that between 1780 and 1900 the indigenous population in the region declined by as much as 80 percent. Depopulation forced societies into unusual distributions of roles and status positions. These frequently involved adoptions, the allocation of multiple titles to a single individual, and other compromises that helped to maintain the social system despite rapid population decline. A great deal of ritual and practical knowledge was lost when those who would have passed the information on grew ill and died.

By the second half of the 19th century, trading profits had combined with high mortality and social uncertainty to create increasingly extravagant potlatches. As houses consolidated in response to losses from epidemics, some used this traditional means of display to climb the status hierarchy, while other houses engaged in lavish potlatches to reaffirm or defend their high status. In addition, spirit dancing seems to have become more extravagant and evocative. Unfortunately, both activities were misunderstood by missionaries and government officials—potlatches were seen as foolish “giveaways” that impoverished their host families, while the reenactment of a legend of cannibalism within the spirit dance was misunderstood as the actual consumption of human flesh. As a result, both practices were outlawed in Canada from 1884 to 1951, though they persisted in discreet settings.

In the closing decades of the 19th century, the fur trade collapsed, and the peoples of the Northwest Coast found themselves in dire economic straits. Divested of most of their lands and increasingly dependent upon manufactured goods, they needed to develop new economic resources. Indigenous reasons for the accumulation of wealth differed from those of Euro-Americans, but, as before, the tribes found ways to enter the dominant economic system. Some individuals began by working for wages in a dull day-after-day routine, something that most other Native American peoples refused to do. At first there was less hired work available than potential employees; jobs were mostly limited to guiding prospectors, backpacking cargo over mountain passes, cutting cordwood for coastal steamers, and working as farm and domestic labour. Yet when the canned salmon industry developed, principally from the Fraser River northward, wage labour boomed.

Native peoples knew more about the habits of the region’s salmon population than anyone else; this presented them with a clear advantage, especially given that the commercial salmon fishery began with a very simple technology. The Northwest Coast Indians had long used canoes, spears, nets, and weirs, and over the decades most changes in the fishing industry involved increased mechanization rather than changes in its fundamental premises: motive power changed from paddles and oars to two-cycle gasoline engines, high-speed gasoline engines, and eventually diesel engines; harvesting tools changed from gill nets and crude beach seines to huge purse seines handled with power gear; and navigation changed from dead reckoning to a reliance on tide tables, compasses, and charts. Native American fishers (both men and women) learned the new skills alongside their coworkers, and a number eventually became independent operators; often these individuals were of hereditary high status and fulfilled traditional expectations for behaviour by employing, feeding, or otherwise aiding the lower-status members of their house group. At the same time, many native people, especially women, were employed in processing the catch—again activities to which they had long been accustomed. Fishing continues to be a mainstay of the economy in this region, and in the long run the indigenous peoples who are dependent upon the industry face problems common to all commercial fishers: commitment to a short-season industry that ties up capital in expensive boats and nets, seasonal income fluctuation, the potential for accidents, the prospect of overfishing, and the fickle nature of the market.

Having retained a high level of economic independence relative to other North American groups, the peoples of this region were able to organize relatively effectively against government interference. Beginning in 1912, the Tlingit, Haida, and other tribes in southeastern Alaska created political groups called Native Brotherhoods, and in 1923 Native Sisterhoods, to act on behalf of the people in legal and other proceedings; similar groups were subsequently formed in coastal British Columbia. These organizations provided valuable training in modern political processes and negotiations. Their successes are remarkable, given the rampant discrimination faced by indigenous peoples of the region, where some businesses posted signs with statements such as “No natives or dogs allowed” as recently as the 1940s.

The Native Brotherhoods (and the nascent, but not yet chartered, Sisterhoods) pursued a variety of legal strategies to ensure equal treatment under the law, beginning with the 1915 passage of an act granting territorial citizenship to native Native Alaskans who met certain criteria. In 1922 they won the acquittal of a traditional leader who had been arrested for voting in the Alaska primary elections, an important precursor to legislation granting U.S. citizenship to all native peoples in 1924 (Canadian federal elections were opened to native peoples in 1960). Also in 1924 a prominent Native Brotherhood leader and lawyer, William L. Paul, Sr. (Tlingit), became the first indigenous person elected to Alaska’s territorial legislature.

These victories were followed by a variety of successful antidiscrimination suits and land claims. In the United States the latter were ultimately resolved through the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. This act resolved indigenous claims of illegal takings in Alaska and created a series of for-profit corporations charged with managing a final settlement of some 44 million acres (17.8 million hectares) of land and $962 million; native peoples participate in these corporations as shareholders, directors, and employees. The Canadian organizations effected the repeal, in 1951, of laws prohibiting potlatches and the filing of land claims. After many years of discussion, the provincial government of British Columbia agreed in 1990 to negotiate tribal land claims through a body known as the British Columbia Treaty Commission; the prescribed negotiation process was necessarily painstaking, and the first Agreement-in-Principal between a tribe and the government was signed in 1999. At the turn of the 21st century, more than 50 progress remained slow and many tribal claims remained in negotiation with the Treaty Commission. See also Native American: History; Native American: Developments in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.